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Does Having Children Make You Unhappy?

By Lisa Belkin April 1, 2009 4:06 pmApril 1, 2009 4:06 pm

Children do not bring happiness. In fact more often they seem to bring unhappiness. That is the conclusion of one academic study after the next — and there are so many that it makes one wonder if researchers kept trying, hoping for a different result.

In the April edition of the online Journal of the British Psychological Association, researcher Nattavudh Powdthavee, of the University of York in Great Britain (whose own academic work concludes that there is no difference between the life satisfaction levels of parents and non-parents) summarizes the existing studies:

And it is not just the years of active parenting that tamp down happiness, Powdthavee writes:

There is also evidence that the strains associated with parenthood are not only limited to the period during which children are physically and economically dependent. For example, Glenn and McLanahan (1981) found those older parents whose children have left home report the same or slightly less happiness than non-parents of similar age and status. Thus, what these results are suggesting is something very controversial — that having children does not bring joy to our lives.

Which leads to the seminal question — why does anyone have children in the first place? If, statistically and on average, parents are no happier, and many are less happy, then those without children, then what are all these baby showers about?

Is it because we see others struggle, but we figure it won’t be as much of a struggle for us? Because we focus on the upside — the coos and the smiles and the little chubby cheeks? Powdthavee believes we do “delude” ourselves to an extent when choosing parenthood:

There is a widespread belief in every human culture that children bring happiness. When people are asked to think about parenthood — either imagining future offspring or thinking about their current ones — they tend to conjure up pictures of healthy babies, handsome boys or gorgeous-looking girls who are flawless in every way. This is the case even when the prospective parents know that raising a child will be painstakingly difficult; they tend to think quite happily about parenthood, which is why most of them eventually leap into it.

And are these rose-colored blinders somehow fitted for us by nature? There are theories about that, too, Powdhavtee writes:

Why do we have such a rosy view about parenthood? One possible explanation for this, according to Daniel Gilbert (2006), is that the belief that “children bring happiness” transmits itself much more successfully from generation to generation than the belief that “children bring misery.” The phenomenon, which Gilbert says is a “super-replicator,” can be explained further by the fact that people who believe that there is no joy in parenthood – and who thus stop having them — are unlikely to be able to pass on their belief much further beyond their own generation. It is a little bit like Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest. Only the belief that has the best chance of transmission — even if it is a faulty one — will be passed on.

Maybe though, it is because we are not “deluded” at all; perhaps see clearly that parenting is hard, but there are moments — enough of them — to make it worth it. Powdhatvee explores that idea, but concludes that what we see as “enough of them” is probably a bit of a delusion in itself. Follow along here, it’s a little complicated, but worth it:

It is, if you like, like winning a lottery. We may be incredibly happy at first if we win £1,000,000 from the National Lottery. But soon enough that money will go into our bank account or into our other extravagant spending sprees in the forms of nice cars or a big house in the country, most of which, after having got them, we do not spend a lot of time thinking about everyday (see, for example, Kahneman et al., 2006). However, because the experience of winning the lottery is so salient to us — perhaps partly because it is such a rare event — if we are asked to think about it again, we are likely to exaggerate the value that it brings.

It is, on the other hand, much more likely that we as parents will end up spending a large chunk of our time attending to the very core process of child care such as, “Am I going to be able to pick up David from his school in time?” or”‘How do I stop Sarah from crying?” Most of these negative experiences are a lot less salient than the positive experiences we have with our kids, which is probably why we tend not to think about them when prompted with a question of whether or not children bring us happiness. Nevertheless, it is these small but more frequent negative experiences, rather than the less frequent but meaningful experiences, that take up most of our attention in a day. It should therefore come to no surprise to us that these negative experiences that come with parenthood will show up much more often in our subjective experiences, including happiness and life satisfaction, than activities that are, although rewarding, relatively rare.

Powdhatvee has no children. But don’t assume that he has rationally and scientifically decided not to have them. To the contrary he wrote this essay (which has been generating angry headlines in British newspapers, such as “Children don’t make you happy…says an expert who doesn’t have any“) to explore why, in spite of the research, he does want to be a parent. He plans to ask his girlfriend’s father for his “blessing” any day now, he writes, and then the couple want to have children, “hopefully one girl and one boy.”

Why did you decide to have children? Are you happier than before they were born? And was “happiness” even one of the reasons on your decision tree?

I was happy before I had kids and am happy now. However, the first year of motherhood was rough. I was only 25 and becoming a mom forced me to grow up. All of a sudden I had to become a lot less selfish and a lot more responsible, which is not easy in a culture that glorifies self-centeredness and irresponsibility.

If anything, I think what this maybe shows is that happiness isn’t everything. I have a 4-year-old daughter, and having a child has probably made me less “happy” — there are more opportunities for conflict with my wife, more financial stress, more activities that would fun but have to deferred to the future. On the other hand, I love my daughter and wouldn’t change things for anything, even if having her sometimes means less day to day “fun” or “enjoyment.” Sometimes, things worth doing and having involve a lot of difficulty and effort. They don’t make us “happy” necessarily, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t undertake them.

I recently read Stephanie Coontz’s “Till Children Do Us Part” (//www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/opinion/05coontz.html). She writes, “[D]oes the arrival of children doom couples to a less satisfying marriage? Not necessarily. Two researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, Philip and Carolyn Cowan, report in a forthcoming briefing paper for the Council on Contemporary Families that most studies finding a large drop in marital quality after childbirth do not consider the very different routes that couples travel toward parenthood. … The Cowans found that the average drop in marital satisfaction was almost entirely accounted for by the couples who slid into being parents, disagreed over it or were ambivalent about it. Couples who planned or equally welcomed the conception were likely to maintain or even increase their marital satisfaction after the child was born.” So, parenting when you desperately or very much wanted that child is probably a qualitatively different experience from parenting a child whom you never wanted, and perhaps feel some resentment toward (a sad situation for that child). People who didn’t want their child, or were ambivalent/unsure about parenting, should not be clumped in with people who were very eager to parent, when studies on satisfaction amongst parents are conducted. Thanks for the interesting post; I really enjoy your blog!

I had a long, long list of reasons why I didn’t want a child. The epiphany arrived when I finally realized that the main (perhaps only) reason why I didn’t want to try was because I was scared. I was not deluded at all, I was very conscious of how easy it is for things to go wrong, during and after the pregnancy. I knew it is very difficult to care for a baby, to raise a child, to deal with a teenager. But I found that I wanted, that I needed that experience. Even though things could go wrong, and it was going to be difficult, and sometimes you end up looking at a stranger with your eyes whom you can’t even like but whom you deeply love, nonetheless.

We’ve been outrageously lucky. Our daughter is 2 years old. She is a precious and bright child, has brought a lot of work and stress to my life, and has also made my life richer and filled with laughter. It is just like they say: parenthood is not for the faint of heart, but it is totally worth it.

I only clicked on the first two links, the JBPA paper and the Alesina at al paper, so it may be that other papers answer my question.

Were the papers about happiness in parenting conducted only with married or divorced couples? The Alesina et al seems to not include never married people in their survey (see, for example, Table 1-US — no “single” category in the marital status variable).

I think Pierce Moffett #2 hit the nail on the head. While having children certainly hasn’t made me happier in the skipping-down-the-street sense, it has enriched my life, forced me to understand things about myself and really made me appreciate my own parents in a new way.

I am not always happier than before I had children, but my life is richer for having had them.

These studies have NOT shown that having children makes you unhappy. Rather, these studies have failed to show that there is a difference in happiness (in either direction) between having children or not.

What exactly is happy? I agree, I don’t have the trivial or lighthearted happiness I used to have, or satisfaction form as many things, becasue I do so many fewer things. But I am so deeply fulfilled and committed and curious and challenged, and I love my partner in two beautiful ways – not only as my husband, but as a father.

I know a baby would be an astounding amount of work/stress/sleep deprivation, yet when I see one (well, one being cute and not screaming) I want one. It’s not a ‘rational’ desire–it just is. It’s the same reason so many people go through all the pain/expense/stress of IVF instead of going straight to the adoption idea….you want a baby of your own.

I think fulfilling that basic biological function is probably gratifying, if not happiness-producing per se.

We decided to have kids because it was the next logical step and we always envisioned our family as being one with kids. I look back on my non-kid days and wonder, as you ask, why on earth anyone has kids. On the other hand, if we were unable to have kids for whatever reason I’m sure I would be obsessed with having kids and be unhappy because we couldn’t. So I really think the grass is always greener on the other side.

Maybe as a mother who has spent most of her life depressed (and depressive) I see happiness differently. My daughter (now 3 and a half) has brought me, or allowed me to see, more moments of pure joy than I remember knowing ever before. Yes it’s hard, esp as my husband works nights, I work days, and we don’t have family in the area. But when I get to see how much joy she gets out of roller skating for the first time, or flying a kite, or any of a huge number of other new things she is experiencing, it’s as though I get to experience those joys just as purely as she does, with no thought or worry about the past or future.

If you want to have children because you expect them to make you happy, you shouldn’t have children. If you are unhappy before children, you will be unhappy after children. You will be miserable, and your children will be miserable. Happiness comes from within.

I believe it. I believe people who have kids are significantly less happy with life in general versus those who don’t. All my friends and family members who have kids are constantly complaining about something or other. They look exhausted and frustrated most of the time, and are most willing to get away from their kids any chance they get. That doesn’t sound like happiness to me. I know for sure my parents definitely weren’t happy in our household and I have a sneaking suspicion that us kids were a huge huge part of that.

Of course any time you bring it up directly, kids are an absolute joy, and they couldn’t imagine life without them. I’m almost thinking it’s related to the throwing good money after bad principle. They don’t want to admit that they made a mistake in having kids, and that their lives would be much much better without them.

In contrast, the people I know who don’t have kids seem much more relaxed and truly enjoying life. They get to travel with their spouses, come and go as they please, and have a lot less stress to deal with.

I’ve made my choice. I’m not having kids. If you parents could only look in the mirror and see how frazzled and unhappy you look as you’re telling us how little Jimmy painted the neighbor’s dog green AGAIN and little Suzie wouldn’t stop screaming from colic all night, you might understand how the child-free have come to the conclusion that you’re all miserable.

Though I adore my son, since his arrival, my marital satisfaction has declined dramatically. And the career has been rough too. I think the problem, though, is not put properly in these studies. Rather than asking if having children raises happiness, we should be looking at the work-family tensions that make having children more likely to reduce happiness. If employers were far more accommodating, it would be an entirely different ballgame.

One answer, I think, is that “happiness” is either poorly defined or, alternatively, it is not what parents seek. I am a relatively new parent myself. I understand–and knew going in–that parenting takes away freedom, adds stress, and has all sorts of other negative qualities. But there is a deep sense of fulfillment in life in having children. I do not begrudge anyone who chooses not to have children. There are plenty of human beings on the planet. Nonetheless, I think there is something deeply fulfilling about being a parent, in that it’s one important part of the human experience. Leading a meaningful life is not about “happiness”–particularly as that term is commonly understood by Americans.

The reported studies seem to be assuming causation in the different happiness levels of parents and their childless peers. But couldn’t this finding be a correlation instead? Maybe people who have a generally happier and more satisfied outlook on life are more likely to choose not to have children, thinking, “Why mess things up? I’m perfectly happy as I am!,” whereas somewhat less happy people may think, “I want to have children because the reason I feel somewhat dissatisfied is that I am childless.” But perhaps these different initial levels of happiness stem either from essential personality traits or are determined by other factors, and thus simply persist after the decision to have children or not to have children has been made and acted upon. Maybe what you need for a truly sound study is to track a group of people who all have very similar happiness levels before making the decision to have children. If the group that became parents ended up significantly less happy than their childless peers, you could be more certain of a causal relationship between parenting and reduced happiness.

Having children is like becoming a lawyer, it is long, tedious, difficult, and arguably not worth it. However; a life of happiness is not completely desireable for all. I for one love to struggle, and through struggle, generate my own form of happiness. The term happiness is very subjective, and I feel most Americans would rather make their mark on this world rather than placating through life with general ease and satisfaction.

I am currently at home with my lovely 3 month old daughter, and I would say that I am as happy as I have ever been. We are lucky in that we have a daughter who has been relatively easy, and yet even an easy baby is a lot of work. Everything is more difficult. Subway rides are a project, and I’ve spent more time cleaning poopy clothes than I’d care to mention. And yet it doesn’t really matter. Perhaps “happiness” is hard to measure (sorry to any utilitarians out there), but I would say that our lives are much fuller and richer than they have ever been. This is why we wanted children — we did not want to spend the rest of our lives with a quiet apartment, no matter how much we would have to give up (travel, going out, career opportunities, etc.).

I am lucky in that for the moment I am not balancing work and motherhood, and we have yet to experience the challenge that multiple children will bring. But we will certainly do it again (if we’re lucky enough to have another one). If this isn’t happiness, I’m not sure what is.

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We're all living the family dynamic, as parents, as children, as siblings, uncles and aunts. At Motherlode, lead writer and editor KJ Dell’Antonia invites contributors and commenters to explore how our families affect our lives, and how the news affects our families—and all families. Join us to talk about education, child care, mealtime, sports, technology, the work-family balance and much more